And Then I Broke My Closet : Before & During The Great Collapse

About the time I release this upon the world I will be down in Fredericksburg, VA watching my baby sister graduate high school. This week has been a roller coaster for me at work, home and in my head. Things are scattered and I was making progress until I realized out of the corner of my eye that my closet was falling down. I live in a pretty decent apartment complex, and as much as I hate renting the upside to that is….the closet falling in is THEIR problem. Not mine.

My closet is about 70 inches wide and has one of the crappy wire shelf/rod deals. I figured the things was driven into studs, but I was wrong. Come to find out…it’s held up by 1.5 inch screws and crappy plastic anchors.

This sort of thing, the kind of device you use to hang a heavy picture frame…not a damn closet.

I am a little bit guilty myself, I had a lot of stuff on that shelf. I run Wooly Wabbit’s Whatnots out of my bedroom, everything you see listed is stored in my room, plus a rather deep backlog. (Tackling which will eventually be a topic for me to talk about.) If I could afford a professional organizer, I would totally get one. Which is just nonsense because I pretty much organize everyone else’s crap but my own. It is a skill I am capable of.

I had already removed stuff at this point….

Well, the universe clearly wants me to clean my crap up and go through all of my clothing because it’s now stocked in various places all over the house. Why do I, a girl who wears only the sexiest of gym shoes, need all these shoes?

The answer? Not this many.

So I have removed everything from the closet and it’s occupying all the extra space in the roommate’s closet and two other closets in the house. Also, how many winter coats do I need? My room went from visible floor to a mess pretty much instantly, I have decided that I just have too much of everything and no real cohesion. But if you stop over at my Pinterest it is plenty evident, I am in sort of a perpetual fashion identity crisis. at this stage in my life. I’ve considered springing for one of those consult services I see online and through many of the bloggers I read, but the truth is…I am too poor for that and too poor for a cohesive wardrobe. Even in my fashion insanity the consistent thread is that I like nice, well made durable clothing. (In short, I have fairly expensive taste.)

I swear this floor was completely clear.

Okay, mostly clear. But I digress, they have agreed to instal something more substantial in my closet. I have no idea what it will be but all I know is that my stuff being strewn about has made me want to get an inventory of what I have and purge all the things I don’t love. (Except for that purple velor dress I wore to a high school home-coming, that will stay. For. Ever.) Then it’ll be a mission to get it all back in there in a much nicer fashion. I put “Closet Organization” into Pinterest and got a lot of neat ideas on tiered closets. I’m thinking that might help alleviate some of the shirt issues I am having.

I use the thin velvet hangers and try to tier them, but it does make them cumbersome to sort through. I also need to find a way to get my hamper into the closet. I am aggressively opposed to dressers, I hate the drawers in most of them. They’re usually too shallow or too narrow. There has never been a solid happy medium for me. So I’m use a lot of those idea hanging things. They can get heavy my themselves. You can barely see it in the picture above, but I actually have my jeans rolled up in one.

The fun part of all of this is…I have no idea what I am going to end up with on the part of the management. So I will have to work around that, so most of this searching is point less. Tonight I get to come home to a new puzzle. Hopefully I can’t get it straight so I don’t have to sleep on the floor again.

What’s your favorite source for organizing ideas? Do we all just use Pinterest? Google has been a huge waste of time for me as all the results are based on who pays them the most money.